Minecraft 1.13 is going to bring a smidge of server havoc, are you ready?

Just in case you weren’t clear on the upcoming chaos due to the release of Minecraft 1.13 Dinnerbone spelled out the upcoming changes clearly in a post today:

We’re making one very big change that is necessary, cannot be avoided and will break every single command: changing almost every block/item ID so that we can have infinite blocks & items. Right now we have no space for any extra blocks in the game.

We need to do that, and it’s happening for 1.13. Every command relating to blocks or items will be broken. It’s unavoidable.
Because of that, I’m rewriting the entire command system because things are already broken. I’m adding new features, speeding it up, making changes that people requested for years. All of this in hopes that it means we don’t have to make any major changes again in the future. We’re breaking everything at once, instead of every single update.

Server owners should start taking stock right away, for what will obviously be a tremendously disruptive event. Overnight, every Bukkit based plugin that links into the block ID system will break; those running complex Spigot, Paper or CraftBukkit installations could be severely affected. The more plugins you run, the greater the impact. Dinnerbone went on to joke about a possible name for the release:

1.13 – The “Let’s make unlimited blocks, thus breaking everything, so let’s make sure we change everything in a way that we’ll never need to break things this badly again” update

As I say, now would be a great time to start assessing the plugins you use, and which are crucial to your game play and worlds. Which could your server not exist without? Are the plugins you’re relying on actively updated or supported? If not, now is the time to investigate possible alternatives that will definitely see 1.13 updates. Just like the 1.7/1.8 era crossover, I expect huge swathes of plugins will never see an update to 1.13 and beyond. This might mean large volumes of plugin functionality is lost to time, or at least servers running legacy JARs.

Vanilla server owner relying on the official Mojang JAR will of course be less affected. That said, pay attention to the planned changes surrounding commands in case you rely on command block setups in your world to extend gameplay. The changes here are also building week in, week out, so stay alert.

As a side note, I’m really excited for this release, despite it likely offering little to nothing in direct material for survival worlds. The extension to the block ID system should allow for some serious upgrades moving forwards, more slab and stair variants anyone?